History has its own life, it is like a person, both easy-going and self-respecting. ——Yu Qiuyu
Anyone who has read the history of the Qing Dynasty will find a peculiar phenomenon, from the creation of The Later Jin in 1616 AD by Nurhaci, to the entry of the Qing army in 1644, and then to the Qing army expedition to Gorkha (Nepal) in 1792, during which in 176, the Qing army not only unified China, but also competed with Western colonists in both the north and the south. In the north, Tsarist Russia's expansion was successfully suppressed, and a vast territory from Heilongjiang to Outer Mongolia to eastern Central Asia (Xinjiang and outer northwest) was pocketed; in the south, on the one hand, southeast Asian countries from Vietnam to Burma were adopted as vassals, and on the other hand, through the closed country (of course, it also caused serious negative effects), the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and later the British and French maritime colonists were excluded from the country. All this can not be done without strong military strength, I have analyzed the super combat effectiveness of the Eight Banner Army in the article "Five Reasons for the Successful Entry of the Qing Dynasty", and now from the perspective of weapons, analyze the six major artifacts that made significant contributions in the early expansion of the Qing Empire.
First, clear the bow.
Before entering the customs, the Qing bow was a special bow for Jurchen hunters, and later became the standard weapon of the Qing army. Qing bows are divided into three categories, war bows (used in wartime), hunting bows (for shooting and hunting), and force bows (for forging), which are characterized by a huge bow body, a long bow tip and embedded corner pieces, which can fire heavy arrows, penetration and lethality are super strong, 110 meters can break the leather armor, 75 meters can break the lock armor, 50 meters can break the plate armor. At that time, people called it "eight forces for the bow, three feet long for the arrow, five inches long for the length of the hammer, the name of the armor cone, the hole in the middle, or the coherence of the two people and have spare strength." Compared with shotguns, the clearance bow only has less range, but the rate of fire is faster and more penetrating. In the war with the Ming army before entering the customs, the Qing army often took advantage of the characteristics of the Qing bow to send heavy armored soldiers to push the chariot of the Mengshi cotton quilt as the forward to block the Ming army's firearms, and after reaching a distance of nearly 100 meters, they then gave play to the advantages of the Qing bow. Later, the Qing army equipped with firearms also coordinated the clear bow with the shotgun, using the shotgun to make the far and the clear bow to make the near, producing a very terrible combat power, in the seventeenth century of the primary firearm + plate armor, it was simply an invincible existence. This is also the reason why the Qing army has not eliminated the Qing bow before the foreign affairs movement.
Clear the bow
2. Cloth face armor.
That is, cotton armor, its production method is roughly: take 7 pounds of Jiangnan silk wool, use cloth in the cotton jacket, thick sewn tightly, put into the water tank to soak, take out and use your feet on the wooden board, and then burst in the sun until it is completely dehydrated. Repeatedly patted, a very thin cotton sheet is made, and between the two layers of cotton pieces is embellished with iron nail pieces, which are then fixed with copper rivets, and then the outer layer is matched with soft cowhide and brocade to make an armor coat. Cloth face armor can not only withstand the cold, but also has a certain protective effect on early firearms, and it moves freely, which is a weapon of the Qing army. It was not until 1905, after the Qing Empire formed the "New Army" and adopted a new style of military uniform, that the cloth armor withdrew from the Qing Army sequence. Incidentally, the Palace Museum originally housed nearly 20,000 sets of cloth face armor. In 1973, in order to improve the welfare of employees, 3,000 sets of Qing Dynasty cloth face armor were sold to employees at a price of 5 corners per set, and each employee was limited to 5 sets of purchases, and stipulated that employees must take apart the cotton armor and take out the silk wool after purchase. Employees later recalled that the wool armor was very strong, the quality of the wool was very good, and the silk quilt made from it has been used to this day.
Cloth face armor
3. Cannons in red.
Originally known as the Hongyi Cannon, originating from Europe, it is a kind of marine breech-loading cannon, which is 3 meters long, has a caliber of about 130 mm, and weighs more than 2 tons. It is characterized by a long barrel, a thick pipe wall, and cylindrical ears on both sides of the center of gravity of the gun body, which can adjust the firing angle; the fire door is rectangular, which can be loaded with 5 kg of heavy gunpowder, and 10 kg of heavy shells can be fired, and the range can reach up to ten miles; It is equipped with "star" (crosshair) and "bucket" (illumination), which can calculate the trajectory of the launch and has high accuracy. The origin of the Hongyi cannon is legendary, a British warship sank in the waters of Macau, the Ming army salvaged it, removed the artillery on it, imitated and named the Hongyi cannon (Hongyi is the Ming Dynasty's common name for Western countries), and quickly used in the Liaodong region against the Later Jin (Qing) war. In the Battle of Ningyuan in 1626 and the Battle of Ningjin in 1627, 30 Hongyi cannons blew up the Eight Banner Army to the ground, and the corpses were piled up, "as far as the artillery fire could reach, and the erosion was several miles". Nurhaci was also seriously injured by the explosion. The Ming court was overjoyed and awarded the Hongyi cannon the title of "Great General of the Pingliao Jingfu of the Anguo All Army".
In the later Ming and Qing Wars, the Eight Banners Army of the Qing Dynasty, which had suffered losses, used the captured craftsman Liu Han to successfully imitate the Hongyi cannon and form its own firearms unit (Wuzhen Chaoha). Because of the taboo of the word "Yi", it was renamed "Red Cannon", and the "Red Cannon" was named "Heavenly Blessing to Help the Great General" in imitation of the old Ming Dynasty. In the Battle of Songjin before entering the pass, the artillery of the Eight Banner Army dispatched more than 40 heavy red-clad cannons at a time, blowing up the solid wall of the Ming Army by nearly 100 meters.
After entering the customs, in the previous wars with the surrounding regimes, the red-clad cannons played a huge role. For example, when the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty conquered Geldan, the Geldan army formed a camel array of 10,000 camels carrying heavy burdens, with shotguns ambushed behind the camel array, and spearmen and light cavalry patrolling the vicinity. If the Qing army attacked the Geldan Camel Formation head-on, it would suffer heavy losses. The Qing army transferred more than a hundred red-clad cannons and indiscriminately bombarded the camel array, blowing up the camel array, and Gordan collapsed into an army.
Cannon in red
4. Rattan soldiers.
Rattan soldiers are special soldiers of the Qing Army, soldiers wear thick cotton clothes embroidered with tiger stripes, can roll on the ground without being injured, and can also wet fireproofs with water during wartime; there are special rattan armor protectors for key parts such as chest and back, this kind of rattan armor is very light and tough, ordinary knives and arrows can not penetrate it; wearing a tiger head hat can increase prestige. The weapon used is a rattan card and a long knife. Rattan cards are made of rattan woven in oil and shaped like a large round hat for defense. The long knife is extremely sharp, and can either cut people or roll on the ground to cut off the legs of horses. At first glance, the rattan soldier shape is very funny, but the close hand-to-hand combat ability is extremely strong. The way of fighting is: when fighting alone, holding a card in the left hand, jumping and rolling, rolling in front of the enemy, using the long knife held in the right hand, slashing and killing the enemy soldier. When encountering the charge of the enemy brigade, they gathered into a group and put up the rattan cards to form a shield wall. When dealing with enemy cavalry, the three of them worked together against an enemy cavalryman, one of whom held a card and covered the other two, and the other two, one cutting off the leg of the horse, and one cutting the enemy who fell off the horse.
The Tengpai soldiers first belonged to Zheng Chenggong's troops and later surrendered to the Qing Dynasty. The Kangxi Emperor had specifically watched the performances of the rattan soldiers and ordered the formation of the "Tiger Cloth Rattan Pai Army". In the Battle of Yaksa against the Russian army, 400 rattan soldiers "went naked and went into the water, posing on the top of the rattan card, and advancing with a blade of knife", killing more than 30 Russian soldiers and taking 15 prisoners, and none of the rattan soldiers were injured. Later, the rattan soldiers ambushed near the enemy city, "the enemy refused, defeated it, and beheaded Erikshe", killing more than 800 Russian troops, and the Russian army was forced to surrender.
During the Daoguang years, when quelling the Rebellion of Zhang Ge in Huijiang, more than 1,000 tiger-clad soldiers wearing tiger clothes and tiger hats rolled to attack, cut off horse legs, cut off cavalry, and repelled more than 10,000 rebel cavalry. In the end, Zhang Ge was captured and the rebellion was successfully quelled.
Rattan soldiers
V. Zambrat Shotgun.
Netizens generally believe that the firearms of the Qing Dynasty are behind the Ming Dynasty, but this is actually an illusion. Before the Opium War, the Qing army's individual firearms had been upgraded twice. One is the complete elimination of the three-eyed ream. The three-eyed rifle was a standard equipment for soldiers in the north of the Ming Dynasty. The History of the Ming Dynasty records that before the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself, he once carried a three-eyed hammer in his hand and patrolled around the palace. Before the Qing army entered the customs, the Eight Banner Soldiers did not use the Three-Eyed Hammer. After entering the customs, he quickly replaced the three-eyed rifle with a clear bow and shotgun in the Green Battalion. Once again, during the Qianlong period, the old shotgun was replaced with the Zambalat shotgun. The Zambalat shotgun is a heavy arquebus gun that was first passed down from Central Asia and later introduced to the Qing Dynasty via Dzungar. The original old shotgun used by the Ming and Qing armies was a light arquebusier, an obsolete arquebus gun used by European colonists in the sixteenth century. Compared with older shotguns, the Zambalat shotgun has a larger caliber, fires heavier projectiles, and is equipped with a metal fork, which can be set up to shoot on the one hand, improving shooting stability. On the other hand, it can be used as a steel fork in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy.
During the Yongzheng period, the Qing army captured some of the Zambarat shotguns during the battle against the Dzungar Khanate, a large-caliber firearm with a long range and forks that attracted the attention of the Qing army, and at that time, 300 poles were specially imitated for the use of front-line soldiers. After the Qianlong Emperor ascended the throne, in order to expedition to Dzungar, he began to imitate the Zambalat shotgun on a large scale. By the end of the Qianlong Dynasty, the Zambrat shotgun basically replaced the old shotgun. Taking the Suiyuan Garrison Eight Banner Army as an example, the department has a total of 3200 eight banner soldiers, but it is equipped with more than 960 Zambrat shotguns, 206 sub-mother guns, 200 spears, and the rest are clear bows and long knives.
Due to the popularity of the Zambalat shotgun, in the middle and late eighteenth century, the Qing army maintained its equipment superiority over the surrounding regimes, and the "ten complete martial arts" during the Qianlong period were indispensable to the Zambrat shotgun.
Qing Dynasty shotguns
Sixth, raise the gun and raise the cannon.
The gun is an enlarged version of the Zambrat shotgun, just as our army's J-8 is to the J-7. The length of the gun is about 1 zhang, the weight varies from twelve or three pounds to more than thirty pounds, the medicine is three or two or five dollars, the lead weighs five dollars, it can be loaded with five at a time, and the range is about 500 meters. When firing, two people must manipulate, one person in front of the ear with a cotton ball, the gun body on the shoulder as a gun frame, the other person in the rear aim to fire, very powerful. Generally, the heavier lifting gun is called the lifting gun. The background of the gun lifting is that when the Qing army suppressed the peasant army and the southwest toast troops, fighting in the mountains, the red-clad cannon was difficult to play a role, and in order to maintain the firepower, the only way to enlarge the Zambrat shotgun was to form a super-large arquebus gun. Raising guns and cannons is a firearm unique to China and played an important role in resisting colonial invasions after the Opium War. During the Second Opium War, Guangzhou Xiangyong aimed his gun at a group of British patrols, killing 1 person and wounding 8 people on the spot. Until the period of the Sino-French War, the Qing army also believed that "to fight foreigners is to carry a gun effectively, a cannon can hold thirty or eighty steps, and can reach seventy or eighty steps, without forcing the code copper cap, not afraid of exhaustion", and recommended the gun as a weapon of war to the Vietnamese side. During the Foreign Affairs Movement, the Qing army also improved the gun lifting and created a new breech-loading gun, "its big end is because of The Mauser, which has both the Belgian Hun Jian and the Ha beg kais li jie, the release can reach four miles away, and the mount Mauser is up, as if it is a weapon to control the enemy", named "Jianli Yuan" Breech lift gun.
Until the period of the War of Resistance Against Japan, our Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, and the militia still had records of carrying guns to fight.
Raise the gun